SMS would like to announce the availability of our E4 Web Services Solution.
Overview & Benefits:
E4 Web Services is a standard method for sharing data and business logic between systems and to
supply information to web pages via the internet or other networks. The code behind E4 Web Services
was developed using Progress OpenEdge, which is the same product that supports your current
application.
With the installation of the E4 Web Services solution, you will be able to access the data and the business
logic that supports that data from various environments. E4 Web Services is supported by most of the
major languages, including but not limited to .Net, Java, PHP, and Silverlight (the solution chosen by
SMS).
Moving forward with this product creates a great opportunity for you, because it will allow 3rd party web
developers, including SMS, your own internal development staff, or other software vendors to access
the database and business logic that currently supports your E3 system. You can make use of E4 Web
Services to support a customer portal to provide more information to your existing customers, as well as
to share data between your business and those that you do business with.
SMS’s E4 Development Path:
Last year SMS embarked on our journey to build a GUI (Graphical User Interface) front end on our
application. Our original plan was to release both a new front end and the new business logic data
access via E4 Web Services. As we progressed in this endeavor, we realized that the scope of the
project was larger then we could accomplish in a timely manner. It also became clear that our customers
have a desire now to expose their current data to their customers as well as other service providers.
Implementation considerations:
Implementation of this solution will require components to be installed and setup on your system, by both
SMS and those that support your network. The following list is a general summary of the steps to be
taken to get this under way:
1. You will need to supply a Tomcat web server that will be used to expose E4 Web Services to the
internet. ( see attached System Requirements Chart )
2. If not already in place, your system will need to be brought up to the current version of OpenEdge
v10.2B
3. There are additional OpenEdge Products from Progress that will need to be installed to support
Web Services. You can contact Mary for a quote of these products.
4. SMS will install an additional database to support E4 Web Services access. The primary
responsibility for this secondary database is to provide additional data to support security and
communications functions necessary for web services
5. SMS will install new business logic code to support the E4 Web Services
All of the above will not affect your existing E3 systems, as it will reside side by side with the NEW E4
offerings. Both systems will share the current application databases and business logic. This makes E4
Web Services an add-on to the E3 system that we believe will provide you, your customers, and others
that you do business with a better and more responsive option as you move forward.
Our Next Step:
This is just the first step in the plan SMS has to move towards a graphically based solution. In the future
we will be expanding this solution by adding the following additional items:
1. A GUI Customer Support desktop solution that will be written in Silverlight. We selected
Silverlight, because it allows SMS to develop in an environment that maintains our commitment to
open solutions, that will run on any platform. This solution will access the data and business logic
using the same Web Services we are providing in this release.
2. A GUI Back Office Support desktop solution, putting a new ‘face’ on the accounting modules
currently in E3.
3. Other solutions to expand upon the Customer Support desktop solution, basing our choice on
customer feedback as we have always done.
4. Expanding our offerings of data and business logic via E4 Web Services as your business needs
are made clear to SMS.
We realize that a solution like this has been a long time coming, but SMS wanted to provide a solution
in this area that lived up to our high standards of functionally, cross platform support and openness. We
looked at various solutions over the years and have found them all to be lacking in one or more areas.
With this offering we now have a solution that meets our standards and will work in a more open and
standard manner.
SMS would like to express our desire to help you move forward with this solution. We will provide you
with the best all-encompassing experience for both you and your customers. Please contact Mary to get
things started or to answer any questions you might have.
